In this electrifying psychological drama, two veterans readjusting to civilian life find their friendship tested when ugly truths come to light. Yemen. Iraq. Afghanistan. After returning from combat to a quiet garrison town, Dan and Richard struggle in their different ways to regain a sense of normality. Dan, desperate to prove to his bourgeois neighbors that he isn't the violent, unstable veteran they'd expect, sticks to a rigorous routine and keeps his head down. Richard, on the other hand, doesn't resist his impulses, repeatedly flouting the law and spending money he doesn't have. All the while, his home life is gradually falling apart—unbeknownst to him, his wife has been having an affair, and his teenaged daughter is becoming increasingly distant and even hostile. The arrival of Richard's sister-in-law, Marlene—a woman with a reputation for sleeping around and bringing bad luck wherever she goes—threatens to destroy what little...

Elle is a psychological thriller that recounts thirty days in the life of its heroine Michèle—powerfully portrayed by Isabelle Huppert in Paul Verhoeven's award-winning film—where memory, sex, and death collide on every page. A few weeks before Christmas, Michèle picks herself up from her living room floor. She has been raped. She has almost no recollection of her attacker but she senses his presence—he is never far away—and this uncanny feeling triggers a whirlwind of events and memories. She begins to fear she is losing her grip on a life already complicated by a demanding job, an ex-husband with a new girlfriend, a jealous lover, and a son trapped in a relationship with his girlfriend pregnant by another man. Hardened by the consequences of her father's violent past, Michèle—nearing fifty, fiercely independent and unsentimental—refuses to be reduced to a victim. When her rapist begins taunting...

Djian's five novels have won acclaim in Europe, and the present one was a bestseller later adapted into an offbeat film. It's not likely, however, that this tedious and melodramatic on-the-road novel of the most formless kind will have much impact here. The story revolves around the love affair between a drifter with an unpublished novel to his credit and a beautiful girl with itchy feet who, for no discernible reason (Djian doesn't seem to believe in reasons), goes from such eccentricities as pouring paint over a car and torching a house to self-destructive madness. Her passion-driven lover follows her from place to place (none identified), flattered by her faith in his literary talents and ready to try his hand at practically anything to keep the affair afloatplumbing, housepainting, pizza-making, selling pianos and, finally, armed robbery. The lovers fail to inspire credibility, or even interest, the events smack more of fantasy than reality and every so often the generally sloppy prose sinks to the level of "A smile spread over her face like an atomic bomb." Here is one disciple Kerouac would have disclaimed.

The Basque landscape is a delightfully sinister setting for the taut and cinematic Unforgivable, the #1 bestseller from French novelist Philippe Djian. Francis, a sixty-year-old author, has not written a word in the twelve years since his first wife and eldest daughter died in a tragic accident. Now his surviving daughter, Alice, a famous actress, has vanished, leaving her husband and twin daughters clueless as to her whereabouts. Francis's second marriage of ten years, to Judith, is also falling apart, and his distress is compounded by his anxiety over Alice's disappearance. He finds comfort in the company of an old friend, Anne-Marguerite, along with her son, Jérémie, a laconic criminal attempting to remake himself in the outside world. But when Francis employs them to uncover evidence of his second wife's affair and to help find his daughter, things go from bad to worse.An exquisite storyteller and prose writer, author Djian "has no equal . . . as the inter...